AIDE—Developing for Android on Android

Android, as a platform, is one of the fastest growing on the planet. It
is available on smartphones and a series of different tablet sizes. Most
devices also include a full spectrum of sensors that are available to
programs you install, so it's a very inviting platform
for development. The usual workflow involves installing a development
environment on some other machine, either a Windows or Linux desktop or
laptop. You then do all of your code writing, compiling and debugging
there before you actually copy it and install it onto your Android
device.

But, there may be times when you want to develop on the road
or shorten the cycle by developing on your Android device
itself. One of the better options for this is AIDE, the Android Java
IDE. AIDE is distributed under a freemium
model. The free version allows you to develop, compile and run your
code. It also allows you to install to the device on which AIDE is running.
However, if you want to generate APK files that can be used to install
onto other devices, you need to purchase the full version.

In this
article, I start by explaining how to install AIDE and create a new
program, and then I cover what is involved in coding, debugging and running
your new program. For more information, see the Google+ page.

Figure 1. AIDE is available as a free download from the Google Play store.

The first step is to install AIDE on your Android device. Open up
the Play Store and do a search for "AIDE". The appropriate package
should show up at the top of the list. If you are in doubt, verify that
the developer is "appfour GmbH". AIDE takes up more than 12MB, so
if you are running short on space, you can transfer the majority of it
to an SD card, leaving 4.45MB in your device's main storage.

The very
first time you start AIDE, it will pop up a dialog box where you can
enter the details for beginning a project. In this dialog,
you can enter an App Name and a Package Name. You also can select an
app template from some built-in ones, such as "Hello World",
"Tetris"
and "Analog Clock Widget". These templates will set up the folders and
files for your new project.

Figure 2. When AIDE starts up the first time, you are shown a dialog for
your first project.

Once you click create, the files will be
created in the folder /mnt/sdcard/appname (where appname is the name
you gave your project), and this new project will be opened up in the
IDE. The main part of the IDE consists of two panes. Their
alignment depends on the size of the device on which you're running it.
On my phone, the panes are one above the other, and on my tablet,
the panes are side by side. The first pane is a file
listing for your project, containing all the properties, resources
and source files needed for an Android project. The second pane is the
main editor, where the central file (MainActivity.java) gets loaded on
project creation.

Joey Bernard has a background in both physics and computer science. This serves him well in his day job as a computational research consultant at the University of New Brunswick. He also teaches computational physics and parallel programming.

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